68

69

One has watched life badly if one has not also seen the hand which, in a considerate manner — kills.

70

If a person has character, he still has his typical experience, which always repeats itself.

71

The wise man as astronomer — so long as you still feel the stars as something “above you,” you still lack the eye of a man who knows.

72

It’s not the strength but the duration of the lofty sensation that makes lofty people.

73

Whoever attains his ideal, in the act of doing just that goes beyond it.

73a

Some peacocks hide their peacock’s tails from all eyes — and call that their pride.

74

A man with genius is unendurable if he does not possess at least two things in addition: gratitude and cleanliness.

75

The degree and type of the sexuality of a man extend all the way to the ultimate peak of his spirit.

76

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

77

With their principles people want to tyrannize their habits or justify them or honour them or abuse them or hide them:— two men with the same principles probably want them for fundamentally different things.

78

Anyone who despises himself nonetheless still respects himself as the one doing the despising.

79

A soul which knows that it is loved but which does not love itself reveals its bottom layers — its deepest stuff comes up.

80

A matter which is explained ceases to concern us. — What does that god mean who advised “Know thyself”? Does that not perhaps mean “Stop being concerned about yourself! Become objective!”— And Socrates? — And the “scientific man”? —

81

It is dreadful to die of thirst in the sea. Must you then salt your truth so much that it can no longer — quench your thirst?

82

“Pity for everyone”— that would hard and tyrannical for you, my neighbour.

83

Instinct — when the house is burning, people forget even their noonday meal. — Indeed, but people later haul it out of the ashes.

84

Woman learns to hate to the extent that she forgets how to enchant.

85

The same emotional affects in men and women have, nonetheless, a different tempo. That’s the reason man and women do not cease misunderstanding each other.

86

Behind all personal vanity women themselves still have their impersonal contempt — for “woman.”

87

Bound heart, free spirit. — When one binds one’s heart firmly and keeps it imprisoned, one can provide one’s spirit many freedoms: I have said that already once. But people do not believe me, provided that they do not already know it . . . .

88

We begin to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

89

Dreadful experiences lead one to wonder whether the person who undergoes them is not something dreadful.

90

Heavy, melancholy men become lighter precisely through what makes other people heavy, through hate and love, and for a while come to their surface.

91

So cold, so icy that we burn our fingers on him! Every hand that grasps him pulls back! — And for that very reason some assume he’s glowing hot.

92

For the sake of his good reputation who has not once — sacrificed himself?

93

In affability there is no hatred for humanity, but for that very reason there is too much contempt for humanity.

94

Maturity in a man: that means having found once again that seriousness which man had as a child, in play.

95

For someone to be ashamed of his immorality: that is a step on the staircase at the end of which he is also ashamed of his morality.

96

People should depart from life in the way Odysseus separated from Nausikaa — blessing it rather than in love with it.1

97

What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.

98

If we train our conscience, it will kiss us at the very moment it bites us.

99

The disappointed man speaks:—“I listened for the echo, and I heard only praise —”

100

We all present ourselves to ourselves as more simple than we are: in this way we give ourselves a rest from our fellow human beings.

101

Today a man with knowledge might easily feel like god transformed into an animal.

102

To discover that one is loved in return should really bring the lover down about his beloved. “How’s that? Is this person modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or — or —. . .”

103

The danger in happiness —“Now everything is turning out the best for me; now I love every destiny:— Who feels like being my destiny?”

104

It is not their love of humanity but the impotence of their love of humanity that prevents today’s Christians — from burning us.

105

For the free spirit, the “pious man of discovery”— the pia fraus [pious fraud] is even more contrary to his taste (against his “piety”) than the impia fraus [impious fraud]. Hence his deep lack of understanding of the church, the sort that is associated with the type “free spirit,”— his unfreedom.

106

Thanks to music the passions enjoy themselves.

107

Once the decision has been made, to shut your ears even to the best counterarguments: a sign of a strong character. Also an occasional will to stupidity.

108

There are no moral phenomenon at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena . . . .

109

The criminal is often enough not equal to his action: he diminishes and disparages it.

110

The lawyers for a criminal are rarely sufficiently artistic to turn the beautiful terror of his action to the benefit of the person who did it.

111

Our vanity is most difficult to injure at the very point where our pride has just been hurt.

112

Anyone who feels himself predestined to observe and not to believe finds all those who believe too noisy and pushy: he fends them off.

113

“Do you want to win him over for yourself? Then make yourself embarrassed in front of him. —”

114

The immense expectation concerning sexual love and the shame in this expectation ruin all perspective in women from the beginning.

115

Where the game has neither love nor hate, woman plays indifferently.

116

The great epochs of our lives occur when we acquire the courage to rename our evil quality our best quality.

117

The will to overcome an emotional affect is ultimately only the will of another emotional affect or of several other emotional affects.

118

There is an innocence in admiration: such innocence belongs to the man who does not yet have any idea that he, too, could at some point be admired.

119

The disgust with filth can be so great that it prevents us from cleansing ourselves — from “justifying” ourselves.

120

Sensuality often makes the growth of love too fast, so that the root remains weak and easy to rip out.

121

There’s something fine about the fact that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer — and that he did not learn it better.

122

To be happy over praise is with some men only a courtesy of the heart — and exactly the opposite of vanity of the spirit.

123

Even concubinage has been corrupted — by marriage.

124

The man who still rejoices while being burned at the stake is not triumphing over the pain but over the fact that he feels none of the pain which he expected. A parable.

125

When we have to change our minds about anyone, we hold the awkwardness which he has thus created for us very much against him.

126

A people is nature’s detour to produce six or seven great men. — Yes, and then to get around them.

127

Science offends the modesty of all real women. With it they feel as if someone wanted to peek under their skin — or even worse, under their dress and finery.

128

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must still seduce the senses to it.

129

The devil has the widest perspective for God; that’s why he keeps himself so far away from Him — for the devil is the oldest friend of knowledge.

130

What someone is begins to show itself when his talent subsides — when he stops showing what he can do. Talent is also finery, and finery is also a hiding place.

131

The sexes deceive themselves about each other: this happens because basically they honour and love only themselves (or, to put the matter more pleasantly, only their own ideal —). Hence the man wants the woman to be peaceful — but woman, like a cat, is essentially not peaceful, however much she may have practised an appearance of peacefulness.

132

People are best punished for their virtues.

133

The man who does not know how to find the way to his own ideal lives more carelessly and impudently than the man without an ideal.

134

All credibility, all good conscience, all appearance of the truth come only from the senses.

135

Pharisaism is not degeneration in a good man: a good part of it is rather the condition of all being-good.2

136

One man seeks a midwife for his ideas, another seeks someone whom he can help: that’s how a good conversation arises.

137

By associating with scholars and artists one easily makes mistakes in reverse directions: behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find — a very remarkable human being.

138

We act while awake as we do in a dream: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate — and then we immediately forget the fact.

139

In revenge and love woman is more barbaric than man.

140

Advice as riddle:—“If the bond is not to break — you must first bite down on it.”

141

The lower abdomen is the reason man does not so easily consider himself a god.

142

The most demure saying I have ever heard: “In true love it’s the soul which envelops the body.”3

143

What we do best our vanity wishes to value as the thing which is most difficult for us. The origin of many a morality.

144

When a woman has scholarly inclinations, then something is usually wrong with her sexuality. Infertility itself tends to encourage a certain masculinity of taste, for man is, if I may say so, “the infertile animal.”

145

In comparing man and woman in general we can say that woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have the instinct for the secondary role.

146

Anyone who fights with monsters should make sure that he does not in the process become a monster himself. And when you look for a long time into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

147

From an old Florentine novella, and in addition from life: buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone [the good and the bad woman wants a stick]. Sacchetti, Nov. 86.

148

To seduce a neighbour into a good opinion and, beyond that, to believe faithfully in this opinion of one’s neighbour: who can match women in performing this trick? —

149

What an age finds evil is commonly an anachronistic echo of what previously was found to be good — the atavism of an older ideal.

150

Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy, around the demi-god everything becomes a satyr play, and around God everything becomes — what? Perhaps a “world”? —

151

Having a talent is not enough: one must also have your permission to have it — isn’t that so, my friends?

152

“Where the tree of knowledge stands is always paradise”: that’s what the oldest and the most recent serpents declare.